Limbo Land
by kitkatkrazy
Summary: Abigail Hobbs wakes up in the most mysterious place; what looks like the grounds of a grand mansion. The sky is constantly gray, the land is vast,. A few people who bare some the most grotesque of injuries and scars surround her as she wakes. They all have some thing in common-their lives have been violently taken by Hannibal Lecter.
1. Chapter 1

Declaimer: I do not own any of the characters on "Hannibal", but I did dream up the story

Chapter 1:

Abigail's POV:

The last thing I can honestly remember was horror. Pure, petrifying horror. It was even worse than when my own father tried to kill me…because I knew there was no chance this time.

I couldn't scream…

I couldn't even run…

I was totally crippled with fear…

Like a doe, cornered by a pack of wolves.

But this was no pack of wolves…

This was just one wolf.

In sheep's clothing so real, it fooled everyone.

Me, especially.

Lecter had me pinned down on the kitchen floor where I almost died months before. His weight and grip on my throat overpowered me at every angle of my body.

But it was the burn and shock of realization of what a fool I had been that made me hurt the most. The burn of adrenaline that spiked like foot-long needles from my heart into my fingertips. The adrenaline that pumped in vain…

Piercing.

Burning.

The tears stung my eyes as I felt the pain so sharp and intense around my left ear, I passed out…

And then I died, I guess…

I was not a strong believer in God. Maybe not as one as I should have been. Maybe if I was, I never would have been as responsible for leading those girls to their deaths.

I probably would have died a lot sooner, and gone to Heaven…maybe…

I don't know what I was expecting to happen after I die.

I was probably expecting punishment.

Hell, maybe. Having to face the lost souls of those girls, or worse…

My father.

Or the Devil.

I was probably even expecting a walk through the course of my life and a review of all my sins…

All I know is that I was _not _expecting this.

It seems that even _afterlife _is just as complicated as life.

And this is my story.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

At first, all I saw was dark.

Then, voices…

"…Think she'll come to, soon?," spoke a man.

The ground felt like damp and hard beneath me. Somehow I knew it was soil. And the chill of the air told me I was outside.

"Dunno, " spoke a woman, "she's here, outside, like I was. Not sure why that is."

There was a pause as I was still trying to figure out where I was. I barely had the strength to lift my eyes open, or even make a sound to let the strangers know I was becoming conscious.

If that was really it.

Consciousness.

Because I felt like I was dreaming.

Truly dreaming.

"So he's going for the younger ones now, huh?" The man held a hint of bitterness in his expression.

"He chopped off her ear before he killed her," the woman said, "Poor girl..."

_Poor girl…_

_Chopped off her ear…_

…_killed her…_

Those were the words that that roused be completely. So..

I was..

I really was…

Dead.

This had to be Hell. No way would you be in Heaven and still have missing parts of your body, right? Yet…

The ground was cold and hard. Like Earth.

But not insufferable freezing.

And there was certainly no burning _fire_ around that I could feel.

Isn't Hell suppose to be a place of eternal suffering and damnation?

Somehow this didn't feel it, either.

What the hell was this place if this wasn't Hell..

..Or Heaven…

…But I was still dead?

My eyes blinked out. I lifted my head carefully.

Weird…

There a very soft sound of breathlessness behind me.

I was eying a thicket of untamed woods before me. Dead leaves and twigs everywhere. More like late Fall in Minnesota just before the frost came. The ground I sat up on felt like the incline of a very wide hill. Not very flat land at all. I looked up at the sky.

Cloudy and grey. Like an ever present storm looming over. I could see dark bluish-grey mountains in the distance, almost like the Blue Ridge on the East Coast.

Only.

Somehow they didn't look very majestic.

More distant and foreboding.

The people I heard speaking had become dead silent at I lifted myself and inspected the environment before me. I immediately snapped my head around to look at them. The sensation of not having an ear suddenly hit me as I now faced the strangers. I gingerly touched the left side of my head. There was strangely no sticky feeling of blood. Just a fleshy gash of scar tissue. And it didn't hurt…just felt weird not being there. My hair had mostly fallen over it as I continued to stare at a man and young woman I had never seen before. Both of them stared back at me with equal surprise.

The man with dark brown eyes was a little on the heavier side, probably in his early to mid thirties, with thick, wavy dark hair combed back just a little past his ears. He also had a neatly-trimmed, matching beard framing his plump jaw and was wearing a dark suit and tie with a maroon vest. The way he was positioned was odd though; he was crouched down to my level, but his body poised at a ninety-degree angle from where his head turned sharply to his right, towards me. It was so strange-like something was very wrong with his neck.

The woman, on the other had, was crouched down normally facing me. She was wearing what looked to be professional dress slacks and a white blouse with a long, grey coat. She had long, lightly streaked dirty blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail that made her ears look a little more stuck out. She had a much thinner frame and face. Her jaw was square and chin held a faint cleft. She also had thin, dark eye brows that arched down, giving her a very serious look. But her face and dark eyelashes framing her large, light eyes gave her a youthfulness that made her look younger than she probably was, with couldn't have been more than a few years of me.

But what really stuck out about her was the way the left arm of her coat hung limply at an angle past her elbow. She used her other hand to prop her crouch position. It made me wonder if she was missing her arm there.

"W-where am I?" I asked slowly, eyeing them. "and who_ are_ you?"


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

At first, neither of the two spoke. The woman looked at the man, confused, while the man turned his eyes to her in mild panic. I was really too overwhelmed to care at the moment, looking around the mysterious environment some more.

From behind them, looked to be patrician-looking, but aged chateau of some sort. Curiosity got the best of me, so I asked yet another question, "What is that place?" I directed my attention to the chateau behind them. The woman turned her head to look at it.

"Well, that's where we live," the young woman said, somewhat hesitantly, turning back towards me. I looked at her directly, unable to really believe.

"Where you live…?"

"Uh, yeah," a slight smile formed at corner of her lips. After a moment's pause, she then said, "Abigail, this may take a while to explain-"

"How do you know my name," I accosted, cutting her off. How the _hell_ did she know my name? I know I don't remember telling either of them.

They looked at each other again. The man breathed out an exhausted sigh, "Abby…uh, you don't mind if I call you Abby, do you?" His hands gestured open with his elbows still resting on his left thigh the way his torso was twisted around slightly. I looked quizzically at him.

I didn't mind being called Abby, really, but these two were perfect strangers to me. I just found it weird to be addressed so casually by a prefect stranger like that.

Then again, everything here was just plain weird. The man acted like whatever he was about to say was suddenly very difficult.

"What's going on?" I asked a second time. But I decided then to at least give them the chance to explain, if they possibly could.

Maybe with starting how they knew my name.

"Uh, maybe we should introduce ourselves first," the young woman began, looking back at the man one more time, "my name is Miriam. Miriam Lass."

"And I'm Franklin Froidevaux," he said, trying to muster a somewhat friendly smile, despite his head looking all jacked-up in the position it was in.

"Guess you guys already know my name, huh," I responded unsurely, careful not to come off condescending, "How is that?"

Miriam looked at me with an almost sad understanding, then she said, "There are some things that we know in this place, things we come to learn over time." She then let out a quite breath, "but as to the 'how', that, I wish I knew."

I relaxed a little, believing them. Why would they lie? They eyes told me they were truthful. Still, things were still not making sense, and I had the feeling the answers here were going to be rather limited.

"So, what is this place?" I then asked.

Miriam paused, as if trying to find the right words.

"Limbo," Franklin simple answered. Miriam turned her head to give him a slightly disapproving look. I must have gaped at him because he continued, "At least…that's what we think this place is. It's the best explanation we've been able to come up with; it's obviously not heaven….but…it's not really Hell, either."

I looked at him, pain starting to flow into my heart, "….But we're still dead, right?"

They both looked at me, sad and sympathetic, their expressions answering for them. I was pretty sure now that Franklin's weird head position and Miriam's missing arm had something to do with how they died.

Great.

"I am so sorry, Abigail," Miriam spoke softly.

I looked down at my hands. I was still seated awkwardly on the rocky ground, with the leaves and twigs all around me, giving me the false illusion that I was still on Earth.

"So," I tried hard not to cry, "what are we suppose to do now?"

Miriam looked at me with complete tolerance in her eyes, "I really wish I had the answer to that one."

"So…," I started again, trying to regain my composure, "you guys…just…hang out here…until…?"

"For the most part," Miriam answered gently.

This made really little sense, but I guess I should be relieved that I wasn't burning in some eternal inferno. I just wish I knew what I was _suppose_ to do next. Being alive at least had some hint of a purpose, no to mention, a beginning, middle, and an end.

…But here…in this…different "plane of reality"…? There wasn't any of that! Just some strangers, in a weird big house, way out in in the middle of Nowhere, Purgatory.

And I never expected Purgatory to look or even _feel_ anything like this.

"It's really not so bad," Franklin shrugged, "there's stuff to do. You may not be able to travel very far here, but there's no cabin fever weighing you down here, either. Since you're dead, you really don't have to eat or drink, but we still get a nice supply of either regardless. We get to have our own rooms in the house, clothes that suit us, personal hobby supplies-almost like a vacation at the summer house."

Franklin paused a moment, "It's…_kinda_ nice. Nothing really bad has happened to any of us; I guess since the worst already has."

Ok.

Now I was _really_ confused. Is he saying this place…

This…

Land of Limbo, or whatever the hell it is…

It's just a vacation where you just…hung out for the rest of eternity?

Everything's provided, and since you'll already dead, there's no fear of injury or further death experience?

Miriam looked away from Franklin, as if defeated, and then said to me, "The truth is…well, mostly what he said. _But_-", she continued, "However permanent this is, really depends."

"Depends on what?" I asked.

Miriam just slowly shook her head, "We haven't been able to completely figure that out yet." I had the feeling there was more to it that, but Miriam choice not to go further.

Still, there was one other thing that stuck out at me. Something I had only just realized. The size of the house.

Franklin's subtle clues: _any of us_

And even if they didn't completely know the answer on how to leave this place-

It's had to have has happened before! To _somebody_!

That's when I ask, "Are there more of you?"

Miriam nodded, "yes there, are. Most of them are inside, or out and about, though not very far.

"How many?"

"Well…," Miriam began, "There's me, Franklin, Georgia, Andrew, Jeremy, Donald, Clara, and then there's Georgia," she paused a moment, saying tentatively "there's also Marissa, and Cassie. About nine….ten, including you."

The last two names felt like a ton of bricks on top of me…

Marissa?

My friend, Marissa? And Cassie?

"Cassie _Boyle_?" I had asked, "…a-and…Marissa Schurr?" Miriam gave a subtle confirmation in a quiet "yes" and nod. I couldn't believe it.

I just couldn't believe it!

Marissa was here!

In this place!

But so was Cassie Boyle. God, I didn't want to face her. Not after I killed her brother. There was no doubt in my mind she probably knew too.

And Marissa?

If she was also in this place, why didn't she come here to meet me? Maybe she didn't know just yet.

But there was one questioned that trumped all others at that moment, once I found out they were here too…

Why?

From what I understood from Miriam, there only seemed to be a large handful of us.

Why us?

Why here?

In this mysterious landscape I would soon come to call as Limbo Land?

I never expected to find the answer to that question nearly as soon as I really did.

Our connection was one thing…

Lecter.


End file.
